The Geography Of Breakfast Food

Continuous war in combination with rampant drug trafficking has caused the coffee industry in Colombia to struggle for many years, though Colombia’s long history with coffee predates that struggle. The coffee plant first reached Colombia sometime in the late 1700s (Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present) and Colombia entered the coffee trade in the 1830s (Wikipedia, Coffee Production in Colombia). The geography of Colombia lends itself well to coffee production. Located in southern South America, Colombia is home to the Andes Mountains, which provides an optimal altitude for coffee (and coca) to grow. The Andes have three sets of mountain ranges, the Western Cordillera, the Central Cordillera, and the Eastern Cordillera. The majority of the coffee plantations in Colombia are on the western side of the Eastern Cordillera (Philip’s World Factbook 2008-2009).

According to statistics, Finland is the country with the highest per capita consumption of coffee, and China is the lowest one, but in Finland there are nearly five million residents only, which means Finland will consume a million bags of coffee every year, but the 1.3 billion residents of China will provide approximately 200 million potential coffee consumers, and this will make China becomes a major coffee market. On the other hand, under the same culture background, compare to Japan and Korea, Chinese average annual per capita consumption is only around 20 Cups, but this also means Chinese consumer coffee market has a big room for future growth.

This diverse beverage is made from roasted ground seeds of a tropical shrub. The most common species of bean is from Ethiopia which is located in western and central Africa. It is well known because many of these coffee beans are planted in over seventy countries, making it one of the most popular beverages in the world. The dried and roasted coffee seeds are ground and moistened by hot water passed through to become a liquid brew. The beverage is now drinkable and stimulating to people because of its natural high impact of caffeine that is why we become so energetic after consuming a drink. Coffee is known everywhere compared to any other drink; it is something that different cultures have in common. That is why coffee benefits a way of living by bringing completely different cultures together.

Netherlands is today the number one consumer of coffee. Dutch people consume more coffee than anyone else in the world. The rest of the European countries and the U.S. follow the list of the highest consumers. Besides coffee, Brazil is the second largest producer of beef.

Never the less, coffee was and is still today a focal point of Brazils agriculture and economy.

For many and many years coffee farmers have been underpaid for their work and have been mistreated. They have slaved over these farms for many and many hours and only get paid less than minimum wage. The way these famers get treated is not acceptable and get treated more like slaves than farm workers. They devote their time and effort into these farms and owners only to not get the same respect back. These farm owners have no respect for these workers or put into thought the time they devote to them. Without hesitation these owners put their workers out on the street after a few months so they don’t owe them anything such as a raise. Money it seems to these owners means everything and they will anything to benefit only themselves.

As the population increases and urbanization continues to develop and become more popular, an important, life-sustaining product is left behind. Most relevant in western civilization, the scarcity of locally grown and produced food is a problem that exists, whether people realize it or not. Per the Food Access Research Atlas, provided by the United States Department of Agriculture, there are 8,959 food deserts in the united states as of 2010 ¹. An Urban Food desert is any location deprived of supermarkets and other access to fresh fruits and vegetables, which usually plagues places of lower socioeconomic status. The low demand for food is attributed to lack of affordability and education, and perceptibly retailers ought not bring their business to places with very little demand for the product. If these deserts are ever to be omitted from the world, it is not enough to hope for the eventual emergence of supermarkets or farms, communities must work together to improve their range of reachable sustenance. It is every person’s duty, as a member of humanity, to aid in fixing the problem and ultimately improving the world, which gives way to defining the common good approach to ethical reasoning. Using the common good approach, a simple, yet collectively beneficial solution is the emergence of local gardens/greenhouses, which would largely combat the detrimental dining options of an urban food desert.

Consolidation: any industry consolidates when one of the steps in the commodity chain becomes controlled by a finite number of producers. In the beef industry consolidation would be at the slaughterhouse and meat packing level. One company would consolidate the steps of production into one facility. Also companies would consolidate the market by only having a small amount of corporations controlling the slaughterhouses and meat packing. Currently, four companies control 87% of the meat production.

Unfortunately, many still do not, but that is becoming less of a problem because of technoscapes, or the use and spread of technology. Because of the technology we are developing in the world, these farmers are able to form cooperatives and can work directly with large corporations such as Amazon, Sam’s Club, Costo, Nestle, and many more to create a better work environment that is more fair trade friendly and allows the farmers to make a livable profit from their products (“Coffee Farmers”). Not only have technoscapes allowed these big companies to work with the farmers, but it has also lead to the sale of fair trade certified coffee in catalogues, online shops, such as amazon as mentioned above, and in super stores, similar to Sam’s Club and Costco, as well as smaller stores, Trader Joe’s for

Poverty, child labour, low wages, long working hours, no employments benefits and illiteracy caused by coffee industries in coffee growing communities due to increased demand of coffee farmer’s children are involved to do work hard with their parents to earn more and also remain illiterate.

As the coffee industry in Brazil grew so did the infrastructure of the country. By the 1900’s coffee made up 70 percent of exports from Brazil. The increased productivity led to an excess in the market that coupled with diminished demand caused a Brazilian depression and created discontent with the current political system that led to dictatorship control (E, 2008) (The Library of Congress, 2010). With the emergence of a more democratic political system and deregulation other crops developed as important exports. This was further encouraged by the government due to a need to have a more diversified economy (The Library of Congress, 2010). Even with shifting production to other crops Brazil remains an important part of the world’s coffee supply as shown in figure 1.

During the time of the coffee boom, another industry was beginning to rise. By the late 1930s, agricultural industries began to take a back seat to industrialization of the cities. Even as times were changing however, Brazil remained one of the world’s top coffee producers.

Around one hundred and twenty five million people are dependent on coffee, making coffee the most valuable and widely traded tropical agricultural product. It is also one of the highest earners in the market with a worth of $70.86 billion dollars, therefore it is highly tradeable but it is largely investing into global poverty due to the rural coffee farmers earning such a small percentage of the overall profit. (Foundation, F. (n.d.). Fairtrade International. 2015) There are over seventy countries producing coffee but over eighty percent of the worlds coffee is only being produced in four main states which are Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam and Indonesia. With

Thus, Starbucks exploits the situation brought about through globalisation, as their "Workers earn two cents a pound for picking berries," says Eric Hahn of the Chicago-based U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project, whilst ”Starbucks turns around and sells a pound of Guatemalan coffee beans for nine dollars” (Zielinski, 1995). However, Alex Singleton, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute claimed that 'Starbucks has done more to lift coffee farmers out of poverty than almost anyone else - including Oxfam and the do-gooders,’ (Davis, 2008). Believing that "the answer to development is not large amounts of foreign aid [rather] it’s getting these countries to engage in the global market, and Starbucks helps that’ (Davis, 2008). Certainly, Starbucks has provided work for farmers living in poverty. Although, Starbucks relationship with the farmers was solely developed for the purpose of exploiting and using these farmers and their workers to gain maximum profit by paying $0.57 per pound of coffee sold to the farmers, that’s 2.2 per cent of the $26 per pound it sells for in the United States (Davis, 2008). Thus, not only are Starbucks exploiting the poverty stricken farmers of Guatemala through underpaying them, but they are also forced to work in virtual slave conditions in an unsafe and unsanitary environment. Hence, Starbucks uses the Globalised world to

Starbucks inbound logistics comprises of the firm’s quality control specialist in selecting top-quality Arabia coffee beans from suppliers that maintain a sustainable approach. Starbucks supports ethical sourcing by operating “responsible purchasing practices, farmer support…” (Starbucks, 2016) also corporate social responsibility (CSR). Additionally, their tactic is utilizing the “Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices” (Starbucks, 2016), wherein this approach is the first set of sustainability benchmarks in the coffee industry and is certified by third-party logistics professionals. The C.A.F.E. Practices has assisted Starbucks in relation to generating a “long-term supply of high-quality coffee” (Starbucks, 2016) and influencing the lives of the farmers and their communities. Furthermore, Starbucks utilizes economies of scales in their inbound logistics activities by developing outstanding supply chain procedures by using C.A.F.E. and also includes collaborating internationally with managers discussing strategic alliances through suppliers for their products. Starbucks have recently